Was Fruit Like This in Eden?

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat."

It is difficult to imagine what things would be like had we not fallen into sin. We have never known the perfect world that God created for us.

The Bible does tell us that God gave man every fruit to eat except for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We know that fruit today is highly perishable. Fruit that is picked incorrectly – or stored improperly or for too long – quickly goes bad. As a result, we are all familiar with those green or pink flavorless things called "tomatoes." Tomatoes in the market are picked green and then exposed to ethylene gas to make them turn red. They are picked green because tomatoes quickly over-ripen. Somehow it seems to us that this state of affairs would be different in a perfect world.

Scientists at Cornell University have developed a natural way to slow the ripening process of tomatoes. They learned that there is a natural process that allows ripe tomatoes to keep for longer periods of time. They learned this from a Brazilian tomato that keeps for weeks even after being picked ripe and flavorful. This tomato has twice as much of a chemical that prevents over-ripening as other tomatoes. This natural chemical, added to other tomatoes, doubles their shelf life. This allows them to be picked ripe and flavorful. Perhaps before sin, all tomatoes had this ability.

Sin touched every part of our lives. We thank God that through the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, sin's effect of separating us from God is reversed!

Prayer:

Dear Lord, I thank You that You have allowed us to, in part, reverse some of the outward results of sin. Let me never lose sight of the fact that only in You is sin truly reversed through forgiveness. Amen.

Notes:

"No more pink tomatoes?" Reader's Digest, Mar. 1990. p. 135.

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